What It’s Like to Live in a Science Museum for a Month

Kate McGroarty, a 24-year-old theater teacher from Chicago, beat out more than 1,500 would-be museum-dwellers to spend a month living in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Since Oct. 20, she’s been exploring the museum’s hidden corners, lighting things on fire and dining with astronauts, with a blog and a YouTube channel as her only links to the outside world.

Wired.com caught up with her this week to see what it’s like to live, eat and breathe a science museum.

Wired.com: Every science writer I know is super jealous of you. But on your blog you mention that you were never really a science geek growing up. What possessed you to do this in the first place, if not the science?

Kate McGroarty: I’m a very naturally curious person. I had a lot of interests growing up. Science was never at the forefront, but I love learning about things I don’t know much about.

I also always have been a huge history nerd, and there’s an equal amount of history in this building, along with science. This whole experience is definitely opening up my mind to the possibilities and amazingness of science.

I’m hugely passionate about education, and I was interested to see the reaches of education through social media. A big part of my job here is, I have a blog, I have a Twitter, I have a Facebook, I have a YouTube, using those networks to see what the kind of educational impact can be. That’s been really interesting for me.

I also just love doing really strange things. It sounded like the biggest adventure I could ever have, and it’s definitely living up to that.

Wired.com: What have you learned about education and social media?

McGroarty: The internet is an interesting place. Each social media outlet is very different. The etiquette rules of each seem to be different. People are more polite on certain social media outlets than others.

The blog is proving to be a really a great way to discuss ideas, and show pictures, and talk about new things I’ve learned.

And I’ve really enjoyed doing the videos. They’ve gotten a lot of great feedback with people going, “Huh, I never knew that!”

Wired.com: It seems like there’s two different kinds of exhibits there: historical things that the museum is preserving, and exhibits that were deliberately constructed to demonstrate something about science. How is it different for you from the visitors playing with these different kinds of exhibits?

McGroarty: Even with the objects like the submarine [a German U-boat captured by the Allies in World War II] and the airplanes, the things that are historical artifacts, they do a good job making them interactive.

What’s different for me is that where most people get to walk through the submarine, I got to walk on top of the submarine. That was definitely a highlight.

Sometimes I get after-hours tours of things…. I get to walk through the exhibits with people who were instrumental in creating them, and talk to them about why they came up with it, what they were hoping to achieve.

That’s been really fun for me, from a lot of different perspectives. Not just to see the museum, but to really get into the inner workings of why people chose to display certain things, how it’s working, how people are responding, and what they are going to do to keep it updated.

Wired.com: Where have you gone that regular museum guests don’t get to go?

I went on a nooks and crannies tour, and went into all the hallways and back rooms and storage rooms. I went to Collections the other day, which was really fun. It was like a playground for history nerds….

And the people who run Collections, you’d think, eh, you’re just moving stuff around. But they are historians, they are hugely organizational, and they’re constantly re-evaluating the collections. It’s a very active job. They’re storytellers. They love all the stories that go along with the objects in the collections.

Wired.com: What was your favorite thing there?

McGroarty: Oh no, don’t make me do that! I really loved this little dial that is like a 1910 version of GPS. It’s like you put in a piece of paper, and you start in one location and it tells you the number of miles until the next one. And it would literally say things like “turn left at corner store,” or, “See large oak tree. Turn this way.” There weren’t roads or maps back then. It was like, what do you build first, a car or a road map? Or roads? This was before roads were even built. It was so funny.

Wired.com: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen?

McGroarty: The exhibits themselves don’t weird me out. People are always like, are you scared at night? I go jogging around the balcony, and I scared one of the maintenance workers. So I don’t get scared, but sometimes I scare other people.

Some of the questions I get from visitors can be a little odd.

Wired.com: Like what?

McGroarty: Everyone wants to know why I’m not in my cube. Everyone seems to think I spend all my time in the glass cube, but I live in the entire museum. I’m always wandering around and exploring.

Wired.com: Where do you spend most of your time?

McGroarty: I definitely spend a lot of time in the Learning Labs. Students can come and purchase specialty education programs for field trips. They’re really fun, and I wanted to be sure to see all of them while I was here.

I do spend a lot of time in my nest, which is my bedroom up on the office floor, which is off limits from the public, that’s where I sleep most nights. I’ve been running around doing so many things, I just kind of pass out.

Wired.com: Are you pretty much on your own all the time?

McGroarty: I’m either around tons of people, or I’m around no people.

When the museum’s open I always have a museum mate, a staff member who is there if I want them. It is nice to have them around when the day is really busy, if for nothing else to keep me on schedule.

But at night, I’m really completely by myself. I wander around, I go for runs, and do a lot of writing. I do a lot of my writing and video-blogging at night. The other night I actually got to read a little bit!

Wired.com: What kind of reading do you do?

McGroarty: I try to do as much research as possible about people I’m going to meet, exhibits, history of the museum, things like that.

McGroarty: No, actually. I don’t have a science background, and I think that’s been one of the most exciting things about this project. It’s been really exciting to see which moments surprise me.

I did a lot of research about the space program before meeting [Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 astronaut] Jim Lovell, and now I’m even more interested in the space program, and the future of that, the whole engineering and science behind space travel which is now boggling my mind every day.

Instances like that, I like that that’s catching me off guard. I’m pretty glad I just showed up with a smile and a good attitude and said “All right! Take your best shot, museum!”

Wired.com: What’s changed the most for you since you got there?

McGroarty: My first week here — and I think this is how I approach every big project I ever have to do — my first week I worked as hard as I possibly could, and got a little burnt out around Day 10 or 11.

Now that I feel like I’ve done so much work, I’m more able to relax. So now I’m a little more easygoing, taking it day by day, and trying not to worry about if I’m doing a good job or not. It’s a little more relaxing and a steadier pace, because I kinda feel like I’m getting the hang of everything.

It’s always been very very fun, but now I have like 9 days left, so I’m really not taking any moments for granted. I’m just trying to have as much fun as possible, every moment of the day.

Wired.com: How has your relationship with science changed since being at the museum?

McGroarty: I used to think that science was just for people who liked science. But science is for everyone, because science is about everyone. You can’t go through your daily life and not encounter science. A majority of the things we do every day involve a lot of science. Just breathing is science.

I’ve always loved theater and storytelling and literature and history. I sort of assumed that because I loved those things, I could not also be someone who loved science. Which is silly.

My whole life I’ve always loved reading about the latest studies, I’ve always been like, “Oh my gosh, you guys, did you hear? I read this about our hippocampus!” I’ve always been a nerd like that, but I’ve still always assumed that because I loved the quote-unquote fine-arts areas of study, I was not meant to love science.

Which is an incorrect assumption. That’s not the way to approach learning.

Wired.com: Do you think not having a really intense relationship with science to begin with shaped the way you approached the museum?

McGroarty: Not having an intimate relationship with science has certainly made this an epic experience.

I really came open to everything, and not loving one kind of science over the other. I got to discover which kinds I gravitated towards. Everything was new to me, and everyone really does get to learn along with me.

I’m not in school still, and I’m still learning all these things. I think that’s been refreshing for the above-18 crowd, to see I’m in my 20s and there’s still this whole big world I have not encountered yet, and I still have to discover and learn. That’s what we could be doing our whole lives.

Wired.com: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

McGroarty: I wanted to be a fire truck. And then I realized that wasn’t going to happen, so I changed my answer about 800 times when I was young.

I did my first professional theater production when I was 11, so it’s always been assumed that I would go into the world of theater, but I didn’t know what I was going to be.

Even now, I don’t know what I’m going to be. Within theater, I love teaching, I love directing, I love writing. I have never been able to pick just one thing.

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